ACL reconstructive surgery and all that comes with it

Page 5: The Second Week of Recovery

Page 5: The Second Week of Recovery

ACL Recovery: Day 10

Wednesday June 18th, 2008

This is my first check in with the doctor since the surgery. He showed me the pictures from my surgery again and explained them in more detail, since I was pretty out of it on the day of surgery.

The nurse took the stiches out and unwrapped the ace bandage from my knee. I was supposed to leave the ace bandage on until this appointment, but with the knee bending caused by the CPM machine it got pretty beat up and I had to rewrap it a couple different times.

He had me take the knee brace off on the exam table and he had me bend my knee over the edge of the table so that he could meausure my flexion. I was only at 75°, even though the CPM machine was puttting me at 90°. Disappointing, but not a huge deal. There was still a lot of swelling and bruising, though less brusing that I thought there would be. Most of the bruising was on the back of my knee and some on the inner side of my knee. Most of the swelling showed on the front of my knee, though he said that the swelling was mostly inside of my knee and what I see on the front is the swelling that the inner part of my knee couldn't contain.

I left there with a prescripton for physical therapy, where they are suppose to work on my range of motion (ROM. He also offered to write a prescripion for a different kind of pain pills, but I turned him down. I am just using Aleve now to control pain and things seem to be fine with that.

After the appointment, I immediately went and scheduled myself for physical therapy twice per week and a place down the street from my house. They were able to get me in for my initial visit that Saturday. I turned in my CPM machine and ice machine and left there very happy because he had unlocked my knee brace from the o° position and now could bend my knee on my own again. I still have to wear the brace a couple more weeks though.

ACL Recovery: Day 13

Saturday June 21st, 2008

My initial visit with the physical therapist. She measured my flexion at 110 degrees. I had made quite a bit of progress in the past couple days thanks to my heal slides and other excercises that I was doing as often as I could. I had stopped icing though and I shouldn't have. A word of advice: Keep icing! My extension, which I had really focused on was at 0°, which was really good and apparently, very important.

She gave me more excercises to do until I meet with her next week.